Organization in biology / Matteo Mossio, editor

Includes index

Part 1: Historical and Conceptual Foundations -- 'Organization': Its Conceptual History, Definition and Relationship to Other Fundamental Biological Concepts -- Varieties of Organicism - A Metacritique? -- Organization as Presupposition? On the Epistemological Implications in the Attitudinal Stance -- 'Dogmatic' vs 'Legitimate' Organicism: Organization as Explanans and Explanandum in Biology -- Does Organicism Really Need Organization? -- Part2: Origins of Life -- A Structuralist Revival for Studies on the Origins of Life and Developmental Evolution -- On the Evolutionary Development of Biological Organization from Complex Prebiotic Chemistry -- Development -- An Organizational View on Development, with a Focus on Life Cycles -- Modelling Mammary Organogenesis from Biological First Principles: Cells and Organization of Constraints -- Part 4: Evolution -- Extended Heredity and the Return of Organizational Thinking in Evolutionary Biology -- Collaboration and the Evolution of Biological Complexity: An Organizational Perspective -- Organisms: Between a Kantian Approach and a Liberal Approach -- Part 5: Ecology -- Individuating Ecosystems by Ascribing Functions to their Parts -- Ecological Functions and Environmental Ethics -- Part 6: Theoretical Biology -- Studying Functional Organization with Systems Theory -- Organizational Principles of Autonomy -- On Taking an Organizational Approach to Cognition -- Biological Organization at the Crossroads between Conservation and Innovation

This open access book assesses the prospects of (re)adopting organization as a pivotal concept in biology. It shows how organization can nourish biological thinking and practice, by reconnecting with the idea of biology as the science of organized systems. The book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art picture of the characterizations and uses of the concept of organization in both biological science and philosophy of biology. It also deals with a variety of themes - including evolution, organogenesis, heredity, cognition and ecology - with respect to which the concept of organization can guide the elaboration of original models and new experimental protocols. It will be of interest to biologists and scholars working in philosophy of science alike